Small, Space, Stylish Living

A 1,000-square-foot guesthouse near Jackson Hole, Wyoming, offers lessons in living large with less.

Architect Eric Logan has grown accustomed to people who compare the pattern of windows on the east wall of the guesthouse he designed for a Dallas couple to a Mondrian painting. But the Dutch artist's influence doesn't stop there. On entering the ecosavvy residence—located on three acres just west of Jackson Hole, Wyoming—your eye goes to the staircase, where the juxtaposition of translucent vertical wall panels—actually two layers of resin sandwiching white fabric—and bright-orange resin squares and rectangles also makes a strong geometric statement.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

According to Logan, who, along with project manager Jeff Lawrence, "got all painterly" with the sustainable wall material, the translucent boards also function as a stair railing for the steel stringer that links the lower and upper floors while supporting the maple treads in between. "The panels filter daylight and the stair wall glows like a lantern," he adds.

Photo: Grey Crawford

Most Popular

Designed to handle the overflow from the main house, where the homeowners and their three young boys come to ski and climb mountains, the guesthouse was intended as a fully functional adjunct, with its own personality but still melding with the surroundings. Stained concrete floors and maple cabinetry further define the interiors, while outside, the simple gabled roof and shingle cladding mimic the main house. "I thought of it like a geode," says Logan, who distinguished the exterior with copper banding and a structured porch supported by four steel posts.

Small in footprint but big in volume—"It's the biggest 1,000-square-foot house you'll ever experience," says Logan—the simple program consists of a living room, kitchenette, bedroom and one bath below and a second bedroom, bath and loft above. Soaring, 24-foot ceilings and an abundance of natural light add to the illusion of spaciousness. In the living room a pair of oversize windows and glass doors meet in one corner and open to views of the adjacent courtyard. Upstairs, carefully composed window openings guarantee privacy while framing glimpses of treetops and crystal blue sky.

Because the homeowner is an art collector, Dallas-based interior designer Emily Summers opted to keep the limited wall space white for artwork. "Plus, you want white in a tiny space," she says. A Claudy Jongstra sheepskin rug dyed marigold yellow emerged as the living room's centerpiece. "It worked perfectly with the Mondrian palette," says Summers, who offset the bold floor covering with a neutral sofa. Heavily textured petrified-wood tables are balanced with billowy drapes, and come evening, hanging light fixtures with the delicacy of blown bubbles provide a soft glow.

Space-saving maneuvers abound throughout: a built-in bench suspended in the entry provides a place to remove shoes and room to stow them underneath, and a space-conscious Donald Judd–inspired platform bed in the master suite has surfaces for books and alarm clocks built right in. "The key to decorating in a small space is not to overpopulate it," says Summers.

What The Pros Know

Ecoresin panels are an environmentally friendly way to create everything from walls and room dividers to bathroom vanities and shower doors. Composed of at least 40 percent recycled content—they are fashioned from waste products taken from the fronts of old vending machines—the nontoxic material meets LEED standards, is lighter than glass and responds beautifully to backlighting. Made up of individual layers, the panels come in an array of colors and can be embedded with natural materials like flower petals and bamboo stalks, fabrics or one-of-a-kind digital designs. Introduced in 1991 by 3form (3-Form.com), prices range from $9 to $75 a square foot, based on the thickness and the kind of interlayers. Architect Eric Logan used them in this guesthouse and on several other projects to encourage light flow between spaces. "We see them as an eco-friendly opportunity to create privacy with various levels of translucency," he says.